Hobby Lobby supporters claim that they aren’t out to take away contraception, just to keep religious employers from paying for it. Now that the Obama administration has made that possible, however, they are still throwing fits.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania analyzed claims data from a nationwide provider of private insurance, and found that on average, contraceptive pill and IUD users spent 20 percent less out-of-pocket on their chosen family planning methods post-ACA.

From Alaska to Tennessee, there are renewed calls for Medicaid expansion from activists in Republican-controlled states after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision upholding a key provision of the Affordable Care Act.

Senate Republicans released a funding proposal on Tuesday that would significantly cut funding for women’s health, including Title X low-income family planning and a key evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention program.

“The exclusion of methods used by men simply makes no sense and benefits no one—not men, not women, not families, not health plans,” Adam Sonfield, author of a new analysis for the Guttmacher Institute on “male” contraceptive methods, said in a statement.

While a new Associated Press report suggests the abortion rate is declining in almost all states, we still don’t know whether there’s been an increase in reproductive wellness. Focusing only on a lowered abortion rate as metric of health and well-being is both inaccurate and stigmatizing of abortion.

by Linda Goler Blount, President and CEO, Black Women's Health Imperative, and Public Voices Fellow, The OpEd Project

May 14, 2015 - 5:18 pm

When a low-income mother is able to plan her pregnancies, she is much more likely to be able to provide for her baby. When she cannot get an abortion, if that is her choice, she is three times more likely to descend into and remain in poverty.

The governor of Iowa has signaled that he doesn’t want to be the sole arbiter of whether the state Medicaid program pays for certain types of abortion care, while Republican lawmakers in the state legislature seem unwilling to allow the governor to relinquish the role.